Holy Punch To The Gut, Batman...

Yes, the TV show, Batman, was cheesy, silly, campy and ridiculous but we sure
loved it anyway. Running from 1966-1968, the ABC show collected ridiculously
high ratings as it captivated audience from young children (that would be me)
right up to college students. It was an abrupt turn-about from the DC Batman
comics which portrayed a darker vigilante fighting crime in Gotham City...

I had a quick visit from Mrs Polkaroo, aka Kat, at my Beer Store last weekend. And I feel somewhat badly about it.

You see, she works at nearby Sheridan College and had come over to pick up a few goodies I had rounded up for her hubby, Drunk Polkaroo.

But I was not in the best of moods. When we met, I groused about work, the weather, everything under the sun... everything except what was really bothering me. You see, I quite like my job so it wasn't that. And I love Summer temperatures so it certainly wasn't that.

It was about Adam West and his death at the age of 88 at his California home after a short-lived fight against Leukemia. You see, I learned of his death mere seconds before I hopped into my car for work and I think my mood just got progressively sadder (and a little bit pissier) with each passing mile.

So Kat, I am sorry. I know I wasn't myself but at that precise moment, I didn't know why. I was still trying to come to terms with the sudden death of an icon from my youth. I think at some point later in my shift, I finally clued in. It was just a one day funk but *POW* it kinda hit me hard.

My Nickel Brook homey, Tony Cox, texted me that Julie
Newmar, who portrayed Catwoman on the TV show was
his first love "at the age of six" the day of West's death.
Tony, my man, you aren't alone. This beautiful actress
fanned the interest of many young men during the run.

Adam West was a bit Hollywood player until landing the TV gig for ABC TV's Batman from 1966 to 1968. He has remained a pop cultural touchstone since that day, playing himself as the lunatic Mayor of Quohog, Rhode Island on the raucous and raunchy TV cartoon, Family Guy, and most recently, again, hilariously as himself on TV's hit sitcom The Big Bang Theory. (I'll include a link to that at the end.)

But West's portrayal of the comic book's Dark Knight was not exactly grim and gritty like the subsequent movies were (to excellent effect, I should add.) No, the TV show Batman was as funny and cheesy as hell. The lead actors, West and Burt Ward as Robin delivered the clearly ridiculous, funniest and most groan-worthy lines with perfectly straight faces. I mean, it was the level of "... and that's why every growing boy and girl should eat their vegetables... should buckle up in a car... should do their homework every night." Even as a young kid who was a comic geek at the time, I knew they were playing this for laughs. West himself said the TV show delivered the "Bright Knight" rather than the dark one.

We feel ya, Boy Wonder, we feel ya. The death of
Adam West came as a blow to his legends of fans...

And man, it was a fun ride. By the third and final season, celebrities were literally flocking to the campy series to do guest cameos. It was considered the TV show to be seen on in Hollywood and a real feather in your acting cap if you could get onto it, even briefly. The graphics were bright and cheerful. The tongue-in-cheek humour ran as rampant as the wacky villains through the streets of Gotham City.

The show ran two nights a week with a cliff-hanger ending on Tuesday nights that was quickly resolved at the beginning of Thursday night's episode. The criminals were funny and wayyy over-the-top. In fact, big-time Hollywood actor, Cesar Romero, who played arch-enemy, The Joker, actually refused to shave his trademark moustache for the role so if you look carefully, you can see the make-up people simply put white face paint over top of it, rendering it nearly (but not quite) invisible.

Whenever you saw Batman and Robin climbing a wall on
the show, it was, of course, just the camera turned to a
90 degree angle. But this is how they used to slip big name
celebrities into the TV show - by having them pop out of an
apartment window to happily greet the Caped Crusaders.
Here, the late Edward G Robinson comes out to say hey.

The easiest way for a big Hollywood celebrity to find themselves on the show was the reoccurring scenes of Batman and Robin climbing the wall of a building using their patented Bat-Rope. As they climbed, celebrities would often open up their apartment windows to greet the Dynamic Duo. And hilariously, since the celebrity was not meant to be recognized by the crime fighters, Batman would just refer to them as "Citizen." The celebrities could be funny as hell but Ward and West would continue to play the scene as straight-laced as possible. It made for some wickedly funny moments. As a kid, I was always wondering which celebrity would pop out a window next during the show. The second the scene showed them climbing or descending on the Bat-Rope, you knew it was gonna happen. I didn't always know the celebrity but man, I sure loved the bit.

So yeah, I was a little off my game when I learned of West's passing on Saturday. Some blows land a lot harder than the ones Batman use to lay on the chins of the Riddler's henchmen (*BAM*) and the loss of a childhood hero tops that list.

Muskoka, you were SO close to the perfect
name for your latest Moonlight Kettle beer.
Come on, Cool Hand Cuke would have been
perfect! Have your people call my people and
we'll start hashing out names for the next ones.

And hey, here's a Little Known Bat-Fact: chisel-jawed Hollywood hunk Lyle Waggoner (The Carol Burnett Show) screen-tested for the role but lost out to the more, well, doughy-in-the-middle West because of all the actors who auditioned, West was the only one who could deliver the ridiculous lines with a straight face.

But you know, when you get bummer news like this, you need something to perk you up a little. And Holy Hops, Barley, Water and Yeast, Batman, who better to do that than the Merry Masters of Mayhem at Muskoka Brewery in Bracebridge?

As you probably know, the brewery has been busy all year with its Moonlight Kettle Series. Each month, there's a new offering. But they went off-script for their Summer Survival Pack, created a specialty beer just for that - no month assigned, just a season, the Summer. Into the Summer mixer was Cool As Cuke Pale Ale. Out was Mad Tom IPA. Wait... WHAT??? Holy betrayal of the unholiest kind, Batman! It's like they swapped out Sidney Crosby for some untested rookie! When the 12-packs landed at my Beer Store, I texted Drunk Polkaroo, who was at the official launch of the new seasonal mixer with Kat in Toronto at the end of March and asked him, "What up wit' dat, Polk?"

"When we were at the release party last week, I asked them about that particular beer. I understand their thinking, they're going for a more summer patio vibe," he explained.

Madman Across The Water? And is Mad
Tom like angry-mad or insane-mad? That's
never really been explained although after
dealing with him personally on Twitter, I
strongly suspect it's a bit of both worlds.

Without... Mad... Tom? Holy Hangin' Offence... in some countries. So I told Polk that hey, I might create my own Muskoka Summer Survival Pack and put in such stalwarts as Mad Tom, Twice As Mad Tom Double IPA, the spicy delight Legendary Oddity, the Hazed and Confused Vermont Style IPA (May's Moonlight Kettle offering) and "two players to be named later."

And when that happens, well, Muskoka's marketing monkeys "would rue the day they messed with Mad Tom!" (Yeah, I said "rue." I went there. Meant it too.) Polk said I should consider calling my mixer, "Don's Survive With Tom and Friends Pack." I like that. It sings to me. Expect that blog soon enough.

So let's look at this interloper, Cool as Cuke Pale Ale, shall we? Okay, Houston, we have a problem. This is actually a pretty tasty Summer beer. (Dammit! This would be much easier if it sucked.) And actually, "untested rookie" isn't accurate as they brought the Cuke out of retirement for this mixer. Turns out the brewery dumped 350 litres (92 gallons) of fresh cucumber juice into every batch of Cool as Cuke, making roughly 4% of the batch actual cucumber juice. Wanna guess what it tastes like? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

When I posted a Muskoka Winterweiss versus a Muskoka
Summerweiss in a Weiss Guy Showdown, an additional
poll by my Beer Buddy Hago certainly had an interesting
result as two people voted for a style that doesn't exist...

Also in the mix is Lemongrass but frankly, I'm not sure what that actually tastes like. Lemony? Grassy? A lemon-grass attack? Don't laugh. It happened to my neighbour.

The 4.7%, 30 IBU (international bitterness units) tastes a lot like cucumber (you probably saw that coming, eh?) with a bit of citrus and was definitely a refreshing, light Summer brew. But dammit, it's no Mad Tom. I was in the Vietcong trenches with Mad Tom and there was no man named Cuke in our unit. (Might have been just a bizarre dream. Who knows?)

So I went directly to the man, Mad Tom himself, the only IPA in Ontario with his own Twitter account (@MuskokaMadTom) and asked about his exclusion.

Why does Captain America look pissed? Because Mad
Tom IPA isn't in the Muskoka Summer Survival Pack.
But, well, that's their outstanding Legendary Oddity
in the glass so maybe it's just a bad rash or something.

Now the thing about Mad Tom on Twitter, as both Beer Buddy Hago and I have learned is that he likes to yell at you. He answers everything in ALL CAPS. So if you ask him something, don't expect pleasantries. After all, his account says, "My name isn't Nice Tom. You've been warned." Naturally, Hago and I ask him the stupidest things we can imagine so that he'll yell at us.

So I asked him flat-out on Twitter: "Why aren't you in the Summer Survival Pack?" His response: "THEY COULDN'T AFFORD MY PRICE!" Fair enough. He probably has a manager to pay, as well as a publicist, four ex-wives and a 20-something Swedish masseuse named Helga.

But Hago and I have run afoul of the man many times, including recently when Hago gifted me with a kick-ass Muskoka giant goblet glass and I excitedly posted a picture of my new glass filled with a tallboy of Mad Tom on Twitter. Mad Tom took one look and barked: "WHAT, DRINKING OUT OF THE CAN SUDDENLY ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU?"

How many 341-ml (11.5 ounces) bottles of Mad Tom IPA
does it take to fill my bitchin' new Muskoka glass? Glad
you asked. It takes one and about five-sixths bottles. So
okay, that is one big-ass glass. Also my new favourite...

Granted, Hago didn't fare any better. When Muskoka asked how they were going to give me a hard time about now since I owned their glassware, one of Hago's "helpful" answers was that "Don's loud and old like Muskoka Mad Tom." That earned him a "BETTER THAN YOUNG AND DUMB!" from Mad Tom. Naturally, Hago chose to see the positive side in this response (because I'm pretty positive that Hago is a pretty positive dude) and excitedly posted, "Hey, Don, Mad Tom thinks I'm young!"

But perhaps the funniest moment regarding Muskoka recently came without input from either the brewery or the man himself. About a week or so ago, I posted a picture of Muskoka's Winterweiss and their Summerweiss side-by-side and asked simply, "Which is better?"

Hago decided to take it a small step further by jokingly attaching a poll and saying, "I'm making it a poll with additional suggested weisseses! Cheers!"

Not this time, Mr West/Wayne. It seems 2016
was your last. Sorry to see you go, old chum...

Now I'm glad Hago added the poll. I don't know how to do that poll thing on Twitter because I'm... what's that word?... oh yeah, stupid. But he offered up the choices of: Summerweiss, Winterweiss, Springweiss and Fallweiss. The problem? There's no such thing as Springweiss and Fallweiss. Hago made them up. The other problem? Out of 13 votes, Fallweiss got two for 15% of the vote. Summerweiss swept the other 11. Deservedly so in this case but I'm a little disheartened that their Winterweiss, a damn solid beer, couldn't beat an imaginary one. "C'est la guerre" ("That's war") as Mad Tom and I said in those Vietcong trenches.

Anyway, add Muskoka Mad Tom to your Twitter if you wanna have some grouchy old good fun. And if he embarrasses you, just remember that it's not as bad as that time you offered the pregnant lady your seat on the bus. Except she wasn't pregnant. And you weren't on the bus. She was your boss and you were, like, super-high at work, wheeling around on your chair. And she is actually not a woman but a guy. (Don't do this! I was in HR for over a week.) But guys and dolls, I will be back in a couple of days so stay cool in this blessed heat. Finally. And Adam West? You were the best, old chum! Check him out on The Big Bang Theory in a link I can only call: What's An Affleck? Until then, I remain...